(Warriors and Flowers: Girlhood in Contemporary Japan is an American lawyer’s coming-of-age novel set in contemporary Japan filled with skyscrapers, “love hotels,” and Gucci bags. It conveys the thoughts, emotions, and aspirations of a young woman who craved a sense of self in a restrictive society with sharply defined gender roles. Evoking the sights and smells of my childhood landscape, a variety of metaphors add depth to the story: subway trains packed with sober-suited businessmen; bamboo branches decorated for the Star Festival; dazzling neon signs and billboards of castle-like “love hotels”; incense sticks burning at a Buddhist altar; the music of Queen, a then popular British rock group, etc. Bringing Japan, Inc. to life, Warriors and Flowers is also filled with snapshots of a peculiar culture replete with company anthems, in-company matchmaking services, morning calisthenics, and obligatory karaoke sessions.)
Prologue
The smell of early summer fills the air, pulling me back into the childhood memories of Star Festival and street vendors. Before boarding the train, I take a moment to savor it. Tsuyu (rainy season) has arrived in the seaport town of Kobe. Heavy with clouds, the sky is blue gray. When I left my mother’s house this morning, the air outside already felt warm and moist. I think of the unbearably hot and humid season tsuyu will turn into in a few weeks. Having grown accustomed to the mild climate in the Pacific Northwest, I momentarily miss summer in Seattle, the home I have adopted.
Each time the train approaches a stop, a stiff male voice comes over the public-address system: Please be careful as you leave. Please don’t push others. Please don’t forget your umbrella. On an overcast Saturday morning, the train is only half full. Come Monday, an endless stream of sober-suited men will pour into the same train, traveling to the destination called Japan, Inc. I recall the days when I squeezed myself into a commuter train packed with lifeless corporate warriors.
Sitting across from me are two women in their mid-twenties. Waving her hands with nails painted red, one sharply criticizes her boss, calling him aitsu –that damn guy.
“I just can’t stand him,” she shakes her head. She describes a man with a fringe of gray hair surrounding his balding head. “The other day he approached me when I was getting ready to leave after five. I was going to a concert with my boyfriend. But that damn guy gave me a huge document to photocopy right away.” She frowns as she examines the split ends of her hair. “What was worse, he didn’t even remember my name. He just called me girl. I’m a nameless figure after two years.” She bemoans the clerical job she barely endures while searching for a way out of the secretarial pool. She is wearing a denim jacket with beaded jewelry over a purple and white paisley dress. Thick eyeliner outlines her eyes.
“I know how you feel,” the other woman gives an emphatic nod. The long dangling earrings she is wearing are orange, matching the color of her shirt. “I’ve thought about quitting myself. But what do you expect when the unemployment rate is all-time high? Besides, we’re getting too old for clerical jobs.” She crosses her legs and arms. I look away from them.
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A wave of nostalgia rolls over me as Kobe’s Rokko Mountain comes into view. Suddenly I am a seventeen-year-old in a uniform consisting of a navy blue suit, a white blouse, black socks, black shoes, and a white cotton bag. The young ladies of our institution remain wholesome and chaste… I recall the words of the school anthem we sang throughout the year, during morning assemblies, Sports Days, opening and closing ceremonies in each semester. Thousands of schools across the country required students to wear navy blue uniforms; but the white cotton bag, supposedly a symbol of chastity, was unique to Meisei Girls’ Academy, a private school known for producing ryosai kenbo –“good wives and wise mothers.” The socks must be black. The skirt must be knee-length. The hair must be shoulder-length; if longer, it must be pulled back into a ponytail, tied with a black string. No barrettes, ribbons or other hair accessories may be used. The pocketbook we were required to keep in our breast pocket contained an exhaustive list of rules. Every morning several teachers stood at the entrance gate for dress inspection. The students who violated the dress code more than twice were summoned to the principal’s office. They were further required to submit a letter of apology from their parents. Noriko and I met at this school, in tenth-grade home economics class taught by Mrs. Yanase, where we sat in alphabetical order. My maiden name is Saeki, Noriko’s is Sawada; so she sat behind me.
The thought of two seventeen-year-old girls taking a bath together may draw gasps from Westerners. But I think longingly of the warm summer evening when Noriko and I walked several blocks to a sento (public bath), carrying towels and soap in basins. I was spending the night at her house in Suma, a town in western Kobe. Noriko’s two-story house in a quiet neighborhood did have a bath unlike my own usagi goya, a “rabbit hutch” in a working-class neighborhood. But that evening Noriko suggested that we walk to a nearby sento. Of course, almost everyone in Japan has a bath today; even my mother had one installed at my childhood home, where she still lives by herself. But that has hardly kept urban dwellers from frequenting a sento, eager to experience a sense of community.
Noriko and I took off our clothes in the changing room and stepped into the bathing room, where we scrubbed away, sitting on small plastic stools at shower stations before dipping into the hot tub. We soaked ourselves and admired the mural on the wall. After taking the bath, we sat side by side and drank juice in the relaxing room replete with hair dryers, beverage vendors and massage chairs.
As we wandered the streets, enjoying a cool breeze, we heard the beat of a drum in the distance. Children dressed in yukatas (light cotton kimonos) passed us, on their way to a bon-odori, an outdoor dance at a nearby Shinto shrine decorated with glowing lanterns. Noriko and I followed them to the shrine, where dancers circled around a tall stage on which the drummer stood. It was a bon season in mid-August when the spirits of the dead are believed to return home; during this season, shrines, temples and parks across Japan hold dances to comfort the spirits. Noriko and I kept talking and laughing while watching the circle of the dancers and taking big bites out of apples from a street vendor. The sights and smells of that night still linger in my memory.
A few weeks before my graduation from law school, a letter arrived from Noriko. The envelope contained two photos. One showed Noriko beaming with a feminine smile in her silver-white kimono. A triangular-shaped head-covering covered the top of an oversized black wig she was wearing. Called tsunokakushi or “head-hider,” the hairpiece is meant to cover the bride’s ”horns of jealously” and symbolize her obedience. Noriko leaned slightly toward her new husband, a thin man who looked stiff in his black kimono.
In another photo, Noriko was wearing a peach-colored taffeta dress, her hair graced with ivory flowers. Standing in a cloud of smoke from dried ice, she and her husband in a gray tuxedo were cutting a multi-layered wedding cake. In both pictures, her husband stared squarely into the lens.
In my law school lounge, I pored over the pictures, sitting behind several classmates who were arguing the constitutionality of school prayers. Studying the grown woman’s face, I tried to remember a girl who had sat down with me on the steps of the shrine, her girlish, black-rimmed glasses popped on her nose. I want to live an ordinary life, said Noriko on that August night, picturing herself as a suburban homemaker who assembles school lunches in the sun-brightened kitchen. I’m going to America, I said. America, where men and women can build careers on an equal footing. America, where I would climb the ladder of success in my second language. I was part of a generation that grew up listening to the Eagles, admiring Robert Redford, savoring Baskin Robbins ice cream. But my longing for America transcended a common desire to visit Disneyland or to admire the Statute of Liberty. I ached to define myself outside of Japan, glorifying the media-fueled image of equal opportunity in America.
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The train pulls into the downtown station of Motomachi. Please don’t forget your umbrella… The announcement begins again. Clutching a folding umbrella, I stand up. Many passengers get off at Motomachi, a busy shopping district of Kobe. When I walk out of the station, the clouds look even heavier. The June breeze in Japan feels almost overpowering. I walk two blocks, my forehead wet from perspiration. I stop in front of a coffee shop, admiring plastic meals artistically displayed in the window. Like most other coffee shops in Japan, this one has an extensive menu of light dishes, from sandwiches to caramel pudding. I push open a glass door and step inside. In the air-conditioned shop, I seat myself at a table by the window. A waitress wearing a blue-and-white apron approaches me and bows her head. After I order iced tea, I glance out the window and watch people passing by. Jazz is playing in the background.
I glance at my watch. It is six minutes past eleven. My iced tea arrives. As I take a sip, I recognize a face in the distance. A short-haired woman in a lavender blouse is walking toward me. A smile spreads across her face.
“It’s good to see you,” she says, squinting her eyes in the sunlight streaming through the window.
I long to get up from the table and throw my arms around her. But I remain still in my chair. I’m back in a country where people frown on open expressions of affection, even among married couples. She sits across the table from me.
“Good to see you, too.” I look at her tightly permed hair cut right above her shoulders. “I wouldn’t have recognized you,” I add, remembering her long straight hair swept back into a ponytail.
“I’ve just had a haircut,” Noriko says. Her forehead glistens with sweat. “Wash-and-go hairstyle. It’s just one way to prepare for Japanese summer.” She pulls a handkerchief out of her purse.
The waitress comes toward our table. Noriko orders iced tea, too. She runs her hands through her hair, a habit I recognize from school days.
Noriko tells me about her husband’s golf tournament. I tell her about the ten-hour flight from Seattle to Narita, slightly exaggerating the way a group of Japanese tourists had plugged up the aisle while taking pictures of one another. We politely chat about nothing until another glass of iced tea arrives. Suddenly, we fall silent. Saddened by our studied politeness, I felt lonely for our endless chatter at the public bath. A few tables away, two middle-aged men in dark suits are discussing business. One is talking nonstop in the Osaka dialect; the other sits stiffly with his arms folded. Turning my head toward the window, I see a kindergartner wearing a brown uniform and a yellow hat, walking hand in hand with his mother. No wonder I have seen so many uniform-clad children since my return; summer vacation in Japan will not start until late July.
I ask Noriko about her married life.
She smiles faintly. “My husband works long hours. He comes home only to eat and sleep.” She laments like most other Japanese corporate wives do. A typical Japanese sarariman (“salaryman”), her husband toils in the office from dawn to midnight and plays golf with colleagues on weekends. “I’m planning to enroll in an English program at a community college in the fall. Who knows? Maybe we’ll visit Seattle some day. It doesn’t hurt to know some English.” She says little else about her life.
“Tell me about your job,” she asks, after a long silence.
I squeeze lemon into my iced tea.
“Now that you’re an American lawyer…” Noriko says admiringly.
“Oh, anyone can become a lawyer in the States,” I say, smiling faintly in a self-depreciating way. “There are law school graduates who are earning a living as cab drivers.” I make Noriko laugh, sharing funny jokes and anecdotes from a country plagued with the world’s largest number of lawyers. If I know how to act modest, I know how to act confident and brisk, too. I have grown accustomed to shaping myself into my self-prescribed role, concealing self-doubt. No one has seen me sitting cross-legged at the computer, sometimes in pajamas, grappling with a sense of going nowhere in an unbearably quiet home.
Tracy Welling joined the intellectual property law section of McMillan Davis. Brad Smyder established his own law firm. Proudly announced the Class of 1998 section of the most recent alumni newsletter from my alma mater. Tracy, who stormed out of the classroom, furious with a constitutional law professor who had made a supposedly sexist joke, and later circulated her note tearing him apart. Brad, who wore shabby pants and gave an earnest speech on animal rights in the student lounge. When the time came, they transformed themselves into lawyers and moved on with their lives. While my sharp-suited schoolmates argue cases or meet with clients, I sit at my kitchen table in my faded sweatshirt, polishing and re-polishing the four-hundred-page dissertation that may never get published after all. Facing the computer screen, I feel a sense of going nowhere. Sitting across from my once best friend, I wish I could talk about those solitary afternoons. But no words come to me. I just keep stirring my iced tea with the straw. In front of other Japanese women, I conceal my private anguish and put on the face of a fearless woman who forged a path in a foreign country. I have long forgotten how to speak in my true voice. Back in the landscape of my childhood, I momentarily reflect on my own seemingly endless journey to self-definition. I am a perpetual traveler who never arrives at a destination.
